Beverly Garland (born Beverly Lucy Fessenden on October 17, 1926 in Santa Cruz, California) is a veteran American film, character and television actress with a half-century of credits, from cult 1950s B movies, is primarily known for her roles in film, soap operas and television. In the 1960s, she gained prominence for her role as Fred MacMurray's second wife, Barbara Harper Douglas on My Three Sons, before in the 1980s, she co-starred as Kate Jackson's widowed mother, Dotty West on Scarecrow and Mrs. King. She also had a recurring role on the hit WB series 7th Heaven.
Garland's 1950s roles tended to be tough women who could handle themselves in violent situations. In 1956 alone, she played a female sheriff in the Western Gunslinger, a prison escapee in Swamp Women and a scientist's wife who battles an alien in It Conquered the World. (All three movies were spoofed in the 1990s by Mystery Science Theater 3000.) Garland then starred as undercover police officer Casey Jones in the syndicated TV series Decoy (1957), the first police series on American television built around a female protagonist.
Garland is best known, however, for playing suburban moms on two later TV series. She played Barbara Harper Douglas, second wife of Steve Douglas (Fred MacMurray), on the final three seasons of the sitcom My Three Sons (1969-72); and she played Dotty West, mother to Mrs. King (Kate Jackson), on all four seasons of the lighthearted espionage drama Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983-87). She also had a recurring role as Laura Holt's mother during the first season of Remington Steele in 1982-83.
Her many TV guest appearances include the first-season Twilight Zone episode "The Four of Us Are Dying," about a con artist with a thousand faces (1960), and the long-running family drama 7th Heaven, in which she has a recurring role as Ginger Jackson.
In 1999 her husband of 39 years died, and since then she has combined her acting career with an increased devotion to the hotel he built and named after her, the 255-room resort style Beverly Garland Holiday Inn and Conference Center in North Hollywood, California.
Garland has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Garland's daughter is actress Carrington Garland, known for her portrayal of the third Kelly Capwell on the American soap opera Santa Barbara.
